


Dotted Line

by My_Write_Life



Series: Get Over It [1]
Category: One Tree Hill, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Break Up, Closure, Derek and Laura mentioned, Divorce, F/M, Lucas and Brooke are team Haley, Mentions of other universes/fandoms, Moving On, Parents mentioned, Peyton is a supportive friend to Nathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 00:56:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12145059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Write_Life/pseuds/My_Write_Life
Summary: An Alternate Universe where Nathan asks for a divorce without looking back and Haley respects him enough to sign on the dotted line.





	Dotted Line

**Author's Note:**

> I love Haley/Nathan, first and foremost. I loved watching the show, I still do because Netflix is a Godsend and it's there whenever I feel nostalgic. I wanted to try my hand at this, a what if they didn't get back together fic.

The papers had been delivered signed and all accounted for, a part of his life no longer an issue and now it was time to move forward with no regrets.

 _A mistake_ , he reminds himself with a tired groan, his body sore and weakened by the sheer amount of drills and runs he'd preformed, trying to forget about Haley and their failed marriage and the fact that they'd both been so naive to think that it could have possibly worked. They were too young, they were naive and understandably hormonal. The thing is, and Nathan hated to admit it, that everyone who had warned them had been right. 

Nathan hadn't assumed that Haley would sign, a part of him had hoped that she wouldn't, that part of him, his broken heart and shattered ego, begging him to take her back and make her beg to be forgiven. It was honest, the way she'd told him that she wanted him back that, she loved him and regretted ever leaving in the first place. Maybe that was the reason he'd been so insistent about the divorce. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for her, not something to regret and feel guilty about. No, getting married ruined everything and the only hope that Nathan had was for Haley to leave, to go back to her new life and to leave him and his broken heart the hell alone.

He showers, eats, says goodnight to his mother and sleeps. He's been this way since Haley's been back, moving in a haze of want and hate and all Nathan wants to do is move on and look straight ahead and forget that the past year had ever been. Lucas and Haley, the inevitable departure of childhood, the inevitability of moving on and moving forward.

He sleeps.

* * *

 Haley still wears her ring. It's infuriating and Nathan feels such a level of disgust at the thin golden band that he chucks his own into a river. Haley tries to speak to him and grows sad when he ignores her and Lucas becomes angry and it's almost like the past year never happened. Tim is silent about everything, almost like he wants to pretend it never happened either and Nathan is thankful for it. He throws himself into basketball, starts studying and keeping in touch with his cousins in New York because why not. Peyton is close by making sure he doesn't do anything stupid and she even forces him to study.

There are options, he's beginning to understand, options that have nothing to do with basketball and careers in sport and he begins to consider them. Peyton knows and supports him, Tim is confused as he is in everything else in life but is no less supportive of him and tries in his own way to talk about history though he has no idea what the hell he's talking about.

Its nice.

Graduation comes after finals, after college applications and games. It's the larger envelopes that have his full attention and he realizes that it's time to tell his mother what his plans are. She's confused by them, of course, having expected something else for Nathan but she's so happy and supportive of him, she holds him so tight that he forgets all the issues that they've been having. He's tempted to accept the University of Noth Carolina but his mother convinces him to go further away, for his sake, she says.

To get any from his father, from Lucas and Tree Hill and from Haley, who'd stayed in Tree Hill with the hope of getting back together, he understands that he has to just...leave it all behind.

He decides on Cornell. Tim and Peyton throw him a going away party with his mother and it's perfect, even when Karen shows up with cake, a smile and a warm hug full of understanding, not even had an, being a perfect ass makes the night any less special.

* * *

 Years go by and Nathan would be lying if he said that he never thought of Haley, he did, whenever something good happened in his life he wondered about her. Wondered if she'd gone back to Chris and her career or if she'd gone to college or was married with children and never thought of him.

He knows that Lucas is an accomplished writer, has a shelf filled to the brim with his novels, all masterpieces, and he knows that Karen now runs a successful chain of chic cafés. Nathan had just been to Chicago to visit with Tim and his family, Carmen was too sweet to be married to Tim, Nathan would always say, and the kids were smart and kind. Nathan's mantle was decorated with crayola colored masterpieces, Christmas and birthday cards and pictures with grinning toothless smiles. He enjoys Christmas in Chicago with Tim and his family. Since his mother's passing it had been a bit lonely.

Peyton composes, runs a radio show and still paints. Nathan doesn't know what's going on in her life as much as he does with Tim but Peyton is busy and private and shows up whenever she's in New York and wants to have a few drinks. He thinks that after her father died that Peyton needed time to get over her grief. He knows well how it feels, how much it hurts.

His place is small and quaint, a brownstone that needed an immediate remodel when he'd purchased it with the money his mother had left him and after selling the house in Tree Hill. He doesn't make enough to be wealthy but he's happy with what he has, happy to teach at the university he'd graduated from and happier that he's making his own life, doing his own thing as opposed to fulfilling his father's every wish. Dan hadn't been happy about Nathan's choice to leave basketball, less than thrilled about Nathan's career path but the man had eventually come around, in his own passive aggressive way. 

* * *

 Its three in the morning on a Monday when Dan calls him, a rare enough occurrence that Nathan picks up, bleary eyed and weary. The last time his father called him at an odd hour was when his mother had the accident and Nathan had barely made it to Tree Hill in time before the machines had been shut off.

Laura and Derek are related to Nathan through his uncle, his mother's older brother who died in a house fire when Nathan was fourteen, cousins that Nathan had become reacquainted with after his divorce in senior year, two faces that he saw nearly everyday since Nathan had moved to New York for school. Nathan had known that Laura was going to to California to pick up her uncle Peter's ashes, what he hadn't known, what his father had informed him of was that Laura had been in an accident on her parents old property. A late night hunter who'd been paying no attention to his surroundings.

"How'd you hear about it?" Nathan controls his breathing, rubs his eyes with a tired hand and sits up in bed, trying not to jar the woman laying at his side sound asleep. Sarah never liked to stay over but when she did the rarity of sharing space spoiled him enoug to try to keep her. "Hold on, I'm going outside."

* * *

"Hunting in the middle of the night? That sounds suspect to me." Sarah scrambles eggs as Nathan checks his duffle for the fifth time that morning.

Dan had made similar claims of suspicion especially when the hunters name came from his lips. A relation to the much older woman that fifteen year old Derek had been sleeping with, the same unhinged woman who'd burned the house down in the preserve.

"Yeah."

"You think that you might drive through your home town on your way to California? Been a while since you've seen your dad."

Nathan hadn't seen his dad since his mother's funeral just a little over a year ago, before that it had been a few years that they'd even spoken after Nathan had announced his plans for college had nothing to do with basketball. It had been so many years since that argument after graduation where Dan had announced, loudly at Nathan's graduation party, that he wouldn't be lifting a finger to help him with college. An embarrassing day, certainly, but now that the years had passed Nathan had a bit of perspective and understood who his father was. 

"I might as well." Nathan leaned back in his stool, checked his phone for messages from his employers wishing him well and giving him all the time he needed due to his loss. It had been a year since he'd been in Tree Hill and twelve years since he'd stayed an entire day in his home town. Why not? "If you could take the time off, would you go with me."

He stares at Sarah's back, her long red curls loose and wild, her strong short legs peaking out of his old high school jersey, her bare feet on his kitchen tile. He wishes she would, as lonely as he is, he wishes that they were different not just friends going through a hard time, Sarah with her impending divorce from her husband Jake and Nathan with all of his issues.

She won't leave with him, wouldn't even if she had a choice because that wasn't who she was to him. 

They have breakfast in silence and as she dresses and kisses him goodbye he wishes that things were different. If he'd never met Haley would he be here right now? No. Nathan would be on some basketball team, a brainless jock with an over inflated ego who went through life with pig headed entitlement. He wouldn't have met Sarah without meeting Haley.

* * *

 

Nathan calls Derek and finds that his cousin is already in Beacon Hills having flown in two night before just after the accident. He'd called Dan to tell him the news, unable to get in touch with Nathan himself or so he said, so Nathan decides to get a ticket himself. The flight is claustrophobic and the air is stale but it gives him time to think without having to concentrate too much like he would have been on the road.

The last time Nathan had spoken to Laura she'd been a bundle of nerves. She'd told him that she had a bad feeling about going back to Beacon Hills without Derek and Nathan had told her to listen to her instincts. Had she known she was going to die? 

Nathan has one too many on his flight and falls asleep halfway dreaming about house fires, Laura and his mother, Haley singing in the distance before he's awoken by an overtired woman in the row across from him who shakes him awake and tells him that they're landing. He shakes himself awake and gets ready to land.

* * *

 

Laura is cremated and placed in the family mausoleum along with Peter. Derek doesn't stick around much longer and leaves in a cruiser after the sheriff smells liquor under his breath. Two whole days in Beacon Hills with Derek and Nathan itches to leave after a terrifying night in the preserve, on the rickety front porch of the once large house his uncle had lived in. Nathan hardly remembered the people who'd died inside.

He leaves spooked out of his mind after buying a ticket back home, to Tree Hill.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Slight crossover. Derek and Laura are Nathan's cousins though they're only mentioned and Deb is dead. Sorry.


End file.
